The Pulpit Commentary on Exodus 5:7

The Pulpit Commentary · Joseph S. Exell and contributors · Public domain

Bricks without straw.

The requirement of "bricks without straw" is not always made by a tyrannical king. All employers of labour who expect certain results without allowing sufficient time for them, and then complain that the work is scamped, are guilty of it. So is the father who expects his son to turn out a great scholar, without giving him the necessary books and the necessary instruction to make him one. So is the mistress who scolds her cook for not sending up a first-rate dinner, yet grudges every penny for the kitchen expenses. There are congregations which demand perpetual sermons of a high quality, yet do not either provide their pastors with sufficient money to buy books, or allow them sufficient leisure time for reading them. There are incumbents who act similarly by their curates, mercantile men who, mutatis mutandis, act so by their clerks, officials of all kinds who so treat their subordinates. The demand for bricks without straw is, unfortunately, far too common a demand. Let this note be set against it, that it is Pharaonic and tyrannical.

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